For our upcoming Austin Pedal & Synth Expo Showcase, we are excited to get to feature the music of a couple of NYC locals. The electronic music Beshken makes is meditative and complex, weaving between digital and acoustic instruments with dreamlike results. His latest track, “Cursed”, picks its way between honey smooth synths and dissonant vocal effects, reflecting on the mental revolutions between sleep and insomnia. On the other end, while their lyrics too reflect on sleepless thoughts, the music of CLAVVS is rather lucid. The production on their most recent single “Devils I Know” places the vocals at the forefront of a hypnotic and unexpectedly baroque electronic backdrop. The Expo will be held on March 16th at the Chugging Monkey - listen to CLAVVS, Beshken and the other artists who will appear below. - Sunny Betz

Burlington is in for a storm tonight. Locals Clever Girls will be joined at the Showcase Lounge of Higher Ground by fellow New Englanders Weakened Friends from Portland, Maine, who are currently touring with NYC's Nervous Dater. This tour de force of ferocious indie rock is sure to melt a few faces and maybe even leave a few tearing up, given the fact that Clever Girls have the uncanny ability to shred while simultaneously dance delicately around broken hearts with lyrics like "I will bite my tongue, I won't think out loud / about how dumb I always get when I see you smile" (from "Dumb Smile.") They don't attempt to be overly clever or tongue-in-cheek or didactic about subjects like love or self-doubt. Their debut LP Luck(streaming below) shows the band isn't afraid to shoot in the dark; maybe they even prefer it that way, letting the goosebumps guide them as they fumble around, seeing what creates a spark. From the look of this album, it seems that they've figured out the formula for finding what's real and drowning out the rest. - Lilly Milman, photo by Hannah Blauner

The Burlington-based indie rock five-piece J Benjoy, according to their own description, make “bummer-rock that makes you smile.” This is an accurate way to characterize their Kayhl Cooper-directed clip for “Armchair,” the entropic anthem off of their LP Dogwood Winter. Filmed during a Vermont winter, the cool-toned visuals alternate between the band members playing instruments together and being carted around on armchairs around the city to much eerier scenes of dark hallways and faceless men wheeling them away. Things must destruct before they can be rebuilt, but as the first verse goes, “things fall down / but they don't always fall into place.” It is in this space — where life has yet to snap into place, where something doesn’t quite fit but you have to figure out how to move forward anyway — that J Bengoy have created “Armchair” and it’s one worth talking about. J Bengoy will be playing at Brooklyn’s Union Pool tonight (August 25) and will be back with another show in Burlington at ArtsRiot on September 7. - Lilly Milman, photo by Kayhl Cooper

The Deli Magazine was born in NYC's Attorney Street in 2004, in the shape of a print issue with a then unknown band on its cover, called Grizzly Bear. Ths NYC blog came in 2005, then the SF one in 2006, and then 9 more in the following years. The Deli is focused on the coverage of emerging bands and solo artists with a 100% local focus - no exceptions!